The following paragraph, from Mrs. Kennedy's testimony contains a wealth of
im****tant information about the shooting. The first sentence, btw, which
appears nonsensical, probably contains a transcription error. Rather than
saying, "..the one that made me turn around was Gov. Connally yelling.", I
suspect the extremely softspoken first lady was saying, "..what made me
turn around was Governor yelling.".
"Well, there must have been two because the one that made me turn around
was Governor Connally yelling. And it used to confuse me because first I
remembered there were three and I used to think my husband didn't make any
sound when he was shot. And Governor Connally screamed. And then I read
the other day that it was the same shot that hit them both. But I used to
think if I only had been looking to the right I would have seen the first
shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot
would not have hit him. But I heard Governor Connally yelling and that
made me turn around, and as I turned to the right my husband was doing
this [indicating with hand at neck]. He was receiving a bullet. And those
are the only two I remember."
Ok, let's apply some very simple analysis here.
Jackie is lamenting the fact that she was looking away from her husband
when, what she believed was the first shot, was fired, right? Our first
thought might be that she was referring to an early shot, circa Z150-160.
But wait a minute! In the next sentence, she tells us *why* she wasn't
looking at JFK. "But I heard Governor Connally yelling and that made me
turn around.".
The Governor, as we all know, began to shout in roughly, the mid Z-200's -
certainly no earlier than 240.
Now, let's look at the Zapruder film. Yep, Jackie does indeed, turn away
from her husband and toward Governor Connally at about Z-254, just after
he began to shout, and exactly as she claimed.
She then hears the shot that she believes, first struck her husband. But
she is looking at Governor Connally at the time, and by her reckoning,
didn't have enough time to pull him down. Ergo, that shot had to have been
fired, WHILE SHE WAS LOOKING AT GOVERNOR CONNALLY.
She was looking at Connally from Z-254 to Z-290, when she suddenly spins
back toward the President and drops her head at an extreme rate of speed.
It is not a coincidence that her reaction occurred at exactly the same
instant that Dr. Alvarez placed Zapruder's reaction to the "noise" at
Z-285 and within a sixth of a second of clear reactions by Kellerman, Mrs.
Connally, and Greer.
Jackie never recognized the first "noise" she heard, probably around
Z150-160, as an actual gunshot. These were her words,
"I guess there was a noise, but it didn't seem like any different noise
really because there is so much noise.."
Neither did she (or anyone else, except for the victims) hear or react to
a shot at Z-223. So, her perception was that the first shot was fired at
Z-285. She heard the second shot at Z-312, one and a half seconds later.
Her thought that she might have had time to pull JFK down, if she had been
looking at him, was not at all unreasonable, though it is unlikely she
could have done it within that short span of time.
Robert Harris
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